


A Hundred Years Older and One Day Closer to Death

by debirlfan



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 05:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2139090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debirlfan/pseuds/debirlfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're not zombies.  Not technically.<br/>Written for Apocalyptothon2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hundred Years Older and One Day Closer to Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Untherius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/gifts).



Bang. Bang. Bang.  
"Penny!"  
Bang. Bang. Bang.  
"Penny!!"  
BangBangBang  
"Penny!!!"

Penny pushed back the covers and swung her feet out of bed. She really didn't need this. The previous evening she'd been hanging with some of the other members of her acting class, and she'd gotten in well past midnight. "I'm coming, I'm coming," she answered, hoping to silence both the pounding and her neighbor's increasingly frantic shouting. Running a hand through her sleep-tousled hair, she padded to the front door and threw it open. Sheldon stood on the other side, hand raised as if he were preparing for another assault on her door. "What?" she demanded.

"You've got to drive me to the university." Picking up the knapsack resting at his feet, he pushed past her into the apartment.

The fog of not enough sleep coupled with too much to drink the night before was starting to clear. Leonard had gone in to work the overnight shift; there was some special piece of equipment he needed to use. But that had all been worked out with Sheldon beforehand, or at least she thought it had. "We agreed that you were going to take the bus."

"The buses aren't running, not that anyone would dare ride one even if they were." 

She stifled a yawn. "Oh, alright, alright. Let me get some coffee." Sometimes it was easier to give in than it was to argue. Either way, Sheldon wasn't about to let her get any more sleep. She started to fill the pot with water.

"Penny, we have to go right now!"

"They're not going to fire you if you're a half-hour late."

"Fire me--Penny, have you watched the news?"

"News? No." After their impromptu party at Lisa's the previous evening, one of the guys had dropped her off at the apartment. She'd changed into shorts and tank top and had fallen into bed, where she'd slept straight through until Sheldon's pounding had wakened her.

Sighing, Sheldon grabbed her remote and switched the television on. The station was in the middle of a special report, the wide-eyed anchor saying something about murderous mobs roaming throughout the city attacking people. Mobs that seemed unaffected by police bullets. Confused, Penny turned away to look for Sheldon, only to find him coming out of her room carrying a pair of sneakers.

"Put these on." He thrust the shoes at her. "If they close the roads, we may have to make a run for it."

"I need to change."

"No time. While you put your shoes on, I'll grab some of your clothes. You can change once we get there." 

For the first time, she noticed the crossbow hanging off Sheldon's shoulder. It drove the point home, even more than the newscast. This wasn't one of Sheldon's emergency drills, or a publicity stunt by the local television station. This was real. Whatever was going down, it was bad. Very bad. She quickly began lacing her sneakers.

 

\--One month later--

 

With the only light coming via propped open doors and reflected by strategically placed mirrors, the stairway was an eerie amalgamation of twisted shadows interspersing near darkness. Ignoring the way the odd juxtaposition raised the hair on the back of her neck, Penny slogged up the final flight of stairs that led to the roof of the Millikan Library. She couldn't help but be reminded of the many times she had complained about her apartment's out-of-order elevator. That had been less than half as many steps, and she hadn't been been dragging a small arsenal along with her.

Reaching the door at the top of the stairs, she turned to wait for Sheldon, who was lagging a floor behind her. As he turned to start up the last set of steps, his muttered complaints grew louder, words undoubtedly pitched so that she would hear.

". . . don't understand why I'm stuck here wasting my intelligence pulling guard duty, when I'm infinitely more qualified to be working in the lab with Amy and Bernadette, or even with Wolowitz--"

Penny cut him off as he joined her. "You're almost as good as I am with a rifle, and you're better with that crossbow," she said, gesturing toward the weapon he carried. She didn't remind him that after his first stint "helping" in the lab, Amy had refused to work with him, or that Howard had threatened to throw him off the roof of the Fairchild building. "There's a full team of qualified biologists, and Raj is helping Howard. Now come on, and behave yourself."

He was still sputtering at the last as she stepped through the door to the roof. She blinked repeatedly at the sudden transition to the bright morning sun. "Shit." Pulling her bag from her shoulder, she dug around in the outside pocket until she found her sunglasses. 

"Did you remember sunscreen today?"

Glancing behind her, Penny saw that Sheldon was wearing both dark glasses and an annoyingly smug look. He was already smearing SPF 100 on his exposed skin, what little of it peeked out beyond his doubled t-shirts.

"I doused myself already," she lied, not wanting to hear yet another lecture. It wasn't something she worried about. She figured the likelihood of dying from skin cancer was considerably lower than that of being eaten. 

His answering snort said that he didn't believe her, but he didn't argue, instead simply trailing Penny as she walked toward the two figures that currently occupied their designated corner of the roof.

"Good morning," she called as she approached, searching her memory for the names of the two men. 

"Kaesemeyer from geology, and Stanley, cafeteria staff." Sheldon spoke quietly into her ear.

Penny was well acquainted with Sheldon's photographic memory and it didn't surprise her that he remembered the names, although the fact that he had bothered to learn them in the first place did. She gave a him a quick nod of thanks as the men returned her greeting. Her gaze automatically swept the land and buildings below them. "Anything?" 

"It's been quiet," Stanley answered, handing off the two-way radio to Sheldon. "Maybe they're finally getting the message and staying away."

She didn't need to ask what message he meant. It had been nearly a week since they'd burned the bodies, but the stench still hung in the air. "Yeah, let's hope."

"Well, I guess we'll head down for some shut-eye, then. Happy hunting."

"Yeah." Penny watched as the two men went inside. Despite mentally chafing at Kaesemeyer's tasteless hunting remark, she didn't envy them. Day watch was hard enough -- on a good day, eight hours of boredom, and on a bad one eight hours of sheer terror -- but night vision goggles and listening for noises in the darkness was worse. She'd pulled that shift, more than once. Since the first time, she didn't complain about getting up early.

"Perimeter check?"

She glanced over, and saw that Sheldon had unpacked his personal gear. Binoculars hung around his neck, and the crossbow was nestled in the crook of his elbow. As much as he might not like the job, Sheldon came prepared, and he was good at it.

They made a slow tour of their corner of the roof, watching for any movement on the ground below. A short distance away, she could see a group working to install some of Howard's makeshift solar cells on the roof of one of the engineering buildings. He kept promising that soon they'd have enough electricity to power some lights and possibly even heat water for a shower. "I guess that if you have to have a zombie apocalypse, being trapped at a university full of geeks isn't such a bad thing," she murmured, barely realizing she had spoken the words out loud.

"How many times do I have to tell you, they're not zombies?" Sheldon sighed deeply, a sure sign that another lecture was coming. "They're not undead. They're still alive, they're just sick. That's what Amy--"

She cut him off. "Fine. They're not zombies. So exactly what do you call folks who are infected with a virus that turns them into mindless, shambling lunatics who are ravenously hungry for human flesh and nearly impossible to kill?" Hindsight was twenty-twenty, but if the police had figured out from the beginning that they had to go for the head, rather than center of mass, they might have controlled the outbreak before it had spread.

For once he didn't have an answer, instead, simply falling into step beside her. 

Penny's thoughts turned to Amy, Bernadette and the others who had been putting in sixteen hour or longer days, trying to find out what the virus was, where it had come from and most importantly, how to stop it. "Do you think they'll find a cure?"

"No. I don't think there is a cure. According to Amy, the virus causes drastic changes to the victim's brain matter and DNA. It's unlikely that those changes could be undone. There might be a vaccine, if we're lucky, which would prevent further infections. If not. . .perhaps if we hold them off and they can't get to us, they'll start eating each other. With luck, they'll kill each other off, and eventually those few that are left will starve."

"Can we last that long?"

"Maybe," he said, with more honesty than she wanted to hear. "If the ammunition and food don't run out." 

She was certain that someone among the group of survivors sheltered at Caltech could figure out how to make ammo, or if not, then build some other sort of weaponry, but food was a problem. The cafeteria a few buildings over had already been stripped of anything edible. There was a group heading out at around noon to raid the cafe in the Avery building. A group, she knew, that included Leonard.

It was dangerous. Avery was within the confines of the campus, but well outside of what they all referred to as the "safe zone" surrounding the library. Penny didn't like the idea of Leonard being out there, but he had volunteered. She understood why he had. Even with glasses, his distance vision wasn't good enough for him to stand sentry on the roof top, and his self-admitted ineptitude with tools left him ill-suited to help Howard's group. If things reached the point where they needed to design makeshift weapons, Leonard's skills might come into play. In the meantime. . . .

Penny pushed thoughts of Leonard's safety out of her mind. It was one of those things that she couldn't let herself dwell on. Things like wondering what was going on in the world outside Pasadena, and whether her parents were still alive. Things like how many of -them- she had killed. Things like the memory of Kripke with the remnants of his last kill still smeared across his face, reaching out for her, and of the crossbow bolt that had suddenly appeared almost directly between his eyes. 

Penny took a deep, steadying breath. She was safe, at least as safe as anyone was. Her group of friends had survived, and were all there as well. For now, that would have to be enough. "Come on, Sheldon, time for another pass."

It was going to be a long eight hours. It always was.

 

Much to Penny's relief, it ended up being an uneventful eight hours. By the time their shift ended and she and Sheldon headed down, the sun's angle had changed, leaving the stairs in even deeper shadows. Penny pulled her penlight from her pocket, only using it in the darkest areas, mindful that the small battery wouldn't last forever but not wanting to chance a fall. 

Her legs were burning as she descended the last few steps of the final flight, stepping into the lobby that had been re-purposed as both meeting room and nerve center. She hung the rifle and ammunition belt she'd carried on the waiting rack, where it would be ready for someone else to use it, once again grateful that the owner of the local gun club had thrown in his lot with the Caltech group. Without the weapons he'd brought, they would have been nearly defenseless.

She was about to ask Sheldon what his plans were when a high-pitched voice caught her attention. "Penny!"

Penny turned as an out-of-breath Bernadette rushed up to them. "Penny, have you heard?"

"Heard what?" For the briefest moment, hope flickered that they'd found something, some treatment that would end this.

"Leonard--" Bernadette gulped in air. "--The group that went to Avery was attacked." Another hesitation as she tried to catch her breath. "Zom. . .zombies."

"Was anyone bitten?" Sheldon asked, before Penny could ask the question.

"Not sure. Their radio was breaking up. All I know is that they're headed back."

Not waiting to hear more, Penny took off at a run for the "processing center" in the administration building just to the library's north. The convoy would return there, especially if there was any danger that someone had been infected.

She arrived just in time to see the vehicles pulling up, a battered SUV and a van that had belonged to campus security. Penny pushed her way through the two dozen or so people milling outside the building. Somehow even without cell phone or internet, news had managed to spread quickly.

Pulling open the door, she ducked inside and cut across the lobby, knowing they'd be unloading the vehicles from the parking area in the rear. She started to head there when a hand on her shoulder stopped her.

"Wait here."

Penny wasn't surprised when she turned to find that it was Leslie Winkle who was holding her back. Leslie was a part of the security force tasked with terminating anyone who became infected. Carrying a rifle in her other hand and wearing an automatic strapped to her hip, it was clear that she took the job seriously.

Leslie's presence and the grim look on her face didn't bode well. Penny forced herself to ask the question. "Leonard?"

"Don't know. But we can't afford to take chances. You know that."

"Let me come with you. Please."

Leslie scowled, but finally nodded. "You stay behind me, and don't interfere. No matter what."

Penny didn't like those conditions, but it was better than waiting in the lobby. "Agreed." She followed the other woman to the loading area at the rear of the building.

There were a handful of people there, most of them as heavily armed as Leslie. They waited for a few long minutes, then a door opened, and four more individuals filed in. One of them was Leonard.

He looked okay. Shaken, but okay. Penny knew, though, that looks could be deceiving. The virus had an incubation period measured in hours, hours in which the victim could quickly go from normal to homicidal maniac. All it took was a superficial bite, the barest contact between saliva and blood.

"Alright, you all know the drill," Leslie spoke up, her attention on the newcomers and her rifle casually trained in their direction. "Strip."

"We don't need to do this. No one was bitten," Leonard argued, even as the others began removing their clothing.

Penny didn't want to hear it, she just wanted him cleared. "Leonard, just do it."

"But--"

"Do it!" She'd done it, after Kripke had nearly. . . . Howard, Raj, Bernie, and Amy all had at one time or another. Modesty and personal boundaries had taken a back seat to survival. Even Sheldon had seen the logic, and after quoting some stupid line from Star Trek about the needs of the many, had stripped off his clothes.

Leonard finally began removing his shirt, following it with his pants. Penny held her breath until she could see that his skin was unmarked.

"You're all clear. You're free to get dressed and go." With that serving as their dismissal Leslie slung her rifle over her shoulder and left them.

Penny crossed the short distance to Leonard's side, joining him as he finished putting his clothes back on. They had survived another day, and if felt like she'd aged a hundred years, well, so be it. She leaned in to plant a quick kiss on his lips. Anything more would have to wait until they were alone. "Come on, let's get out of here."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Another Day Closer to Death (The Rest of Your Life Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12054084) by [tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday)




End file.
